Four Nine

The date echoed in my head. 9 April. It was like recalling a dream from months ago: I knew it had significance, but I did not know why.

And then I remembered. It was his birthday.

He was my first real boyfriend, my college sweetheart. We dated for a solid year and half before things began to warp like an old record. We started out starry-eyed and in love; he was the ying to my yang as we shared so many adventures together. After that first beautiful year and a half, we had several intermissions and reboots of our relationship, all of them foiled – mostly because there was always another girl or he was too selfish to care. The emotional abuse he inflected on me should not have been tolerated. We were not compatible, no matter how much my heart told me we were.

It’s been over a decade since we ended it all. A year after our last attempt at being a couple, we met in a dusty midwestern bar at my request – the kind only washed up locals go to – and aired all our grievances, caught up on each other’s lives, and reminisced about those good old days. Not only was it cathartic, but I also got to spend a few hours with the same guy I had fallen head over heels for so many years ago. I knew that persona was temporary, however. We ended on a good note as we hugged in the parking lot long after last call was announced. While it felt good in the moment and as now looking back, the days and weeks that followed that meeting left my scarred heart bleeding and infected. The ebb and flow of time have softened that scar. I told him never to contact me again before we parted. Here I am, nearly 15 years later and he still has kept that promise and I am grateful for that.

I found myself thinking about him randomly, on his 34th birthday. I know so little about his life now, but I choose to keep it that way. It meant taking people off of my social media feeds that were still strongly connected to him, despite the fact he lives over 1,000 miles away. This cold hearted sniveling super rat (as Holly Golightly would say) is a husband and father now. His wife is a nurse, blonde, and has one of those smiles that lights up a room; I saw a picture of her once. I don’t know what he does for work, but I’m going to assume it is in the same vein of his college major. Despite the healing and the time that has passed, I have no desire to reconnect with him or view his online profiles or to know details about his life.

With all these thoughts swirling in my head, I found myself praying for him. Last I knew, he was not a Christian. His priority had always been himself. Maybe it’s different now with a family; maybe it’s not. I lifted him up in prayer in honor of his birthday, that the Light of Christ may shine into his life. That he may turn to God in those moments of both triumph and disaster and for a truly spiritual Christian to reflect the love of the Father to him and his family.

Perhaps we’ll meet again in Heaven, both of us washed clean in robes of white. That would phenomenal .

So here’s to him on his birthday: may this 34th trip around the sun be beautiful and covered in the glory of the Lord.